Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 09, 2014 @01:27PM
from the failure-to-launch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, SpaceX filed suit against the U.S. Air Force in an attempt to enforce competition for rocket purchases. They argued it was a bad idea to blindly shovel money into Russia's coffers for rides to space, and said there was no way for other rocket manufacturers to get a foot in the door. Last week, it looked like they were getting traction — an injunction was granted, temporarily halting the Air Force's process of buying rockets. Unfortunately for SpaceX, that injunction has now been dissolved. At the heart of the suit was Executive Order 13,661, which blocks the transfer of wealth to people in the Russian Federation who are related to the situation in the Ukraine. SpaceX said that since Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was the head of their space agency, payments to the agency were effectively payments to him. The U.S. departments of Commerce, State, and the Treasury all sent letters to the court saying this was not the case, and the court agreed. Here's the final ruling."

Some times I wish this were true, but it is not. I think, Obama is genuinely and sincerely appalled by Putin's aggression against Ukraine and other countries. He is just caught completely by surprise — Obama is a master of class warfare rhetoric, which helps him domestically, but he is learning foreign relations as well as simple history of the world on the job.

Mr. Biden is among the best-informed lawmakers on international affairs, a gap in Mr. Obama’s résumé.

I'd say, things could've been a lot worse under an Administration, where a jovial lunatic is the primary fount of foreign policy expertise. Or, maybe, they are just as bad as they could get...

Whereas Putin is an expert, Obama is a neophite — an out-of-his-league amateur. While Putin can order his army into Ukraine at any moment — they already have "PEACEKEERS" painted on their helmets and vehicles — Obama can't even muster enough determination to send body-armor to Ukrainian military.